Monday, February 22, 2021

Germany January 2021

 


22% Share!


The German PEV passenger car market started the year like it ended the last one, ie, on fire, with doubling sales, to 36,903 registrations, so it seems there's no stopping to the German EV locomotive.

While BEVs jumped significantly (+118% YoY), PHEVs did even better (+138%), allowing plugin hybrids to continue ahead of full electrics (44% of registrations were BEV and 56% PHEV).

This brilliant performance, added to the steep fall of the overall market (-31% YoY), allowed the PEV Share to jump from the 6.6% in January '20, to the current 22%(!), with 
BEVs alone hitting 10%

Interestingly, this 22% score is frankly above the 14% of the year 2020, so we might see 30% months in Germany this year...and 50% months by 2023?

Looking at January Best Sellers, we have the Volkswagen ID.3 leading the way, with 1,799 units, with the German maker making a 1-2 win in January, with the VW e-Up winning the 2nd place, and only a few units prevented VW from having all podium spots to itself, as the VW Passat GTE lost the Bronze medal by just 14 units.

Nevertheless, VW had reasons to smile about, as it placed 5 models in the Top 10, with the new Golf PHEV in #9, and the e-Golf (?!?) in #10.

It is amazing that the previous generation Golf (VII) had its BEV version selling at almost the same level as the current generation Golf (VIII) PHEV...

But it wasn't only Volkswagen shining, BMW also placed models in the table, with 2 of them even having record months (X3 PHEV and X5 PHEV), while Mercedes had 4 representatives, leaving just 2 real foreigners in the table, the #7 Hyundai Kona EV and the #8 Renault Zoe (Smart Fortwo EV belongs to Daimler Group, while Ford has factories in Germany, so the Kuga PHEV can be seen has partly German). 

Outside the Top 20, a mention to the #21 Skoda Octavia PHEV, that is sure to become a familiar face in the table, once the ramp up is complete, while 2 Best Sellers had (expected) slow starts, with the Tesla Model 3 registering 422 units, while the VW ID.4 had 325. Expect both to join the table next month, and jump to the top spots in March.

In the start of VW's Year 1 of its Plan to become #1 in the EV World, the Volkswagen Group had a strong January, with 35% share, with Volkswagen (19%) in the front, while Audi started in 4th, with 8% share, below Mercedes (14%) and BMW (13%), while Renault and Smart are tied in 5th, both with 5% each.

With its domestic market in the bag, Volkswagen can now look to expand its lead in the European market, but Herbert Diess priority for 2021 lies elsewhere, China is the priority for Volkswagen this year, as it tries to recover ground not only from Tesla, but also to some of the strongest Chinese OEMs, like BYD or SAIC. 

And then in 2022, the German maker will finally look seriously at the US market and become the #2 brand there (for 2021 the goal is to be the #2 OEM, having been #3 in 2020, only behind GM).




25 comments:

  1. 10% BEV share, despite the hangover after the last-minute emissions mandate rush at the end of last year, is a truly amazing result... Didn't expect to see regular two-digit scores here this soon :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. While I can't find definite information, it appears that the Kuga is produced only in Spain... So no, it's not even partly German.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My wording might not have been the best, my intention was to show that because Ford has factories in Germany, it sort of can be viewed as a "local(ish) brand"?...

      (Just asking now, no idea how Germans see Ford)

      Delete
  3. 422 Model 3 registrations in January? Looks like there has been a major logistics hiccup... These are the units that they needed to hit the 500,000 goal last year! ;-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just the normal hiccup, look back and you will see that Tesla is always delivering a lot more the last month in the quarter. The factory in US will produce cars for Europe in the beginning of the quarter and then turn to cars for US in the end of the quarter. This way nearly all cars the produce will be delivered the same quarter as they are produce which makes there economy look much better. When Tesla start producing cars in Germany this affect will decrease a lot.

      Delete
    2. I'm talking about the fact that they still had a fairly significant amount of cars to deliver in January, instead of having them all delivered before the end of the last quarter.

      Delete
  4. @José I don't understand why you insist on calling 2020 "year zero" for the current iteration of VW's EV leadership plans... Clearly, 2020 was meant to be year one (although the missed partially) -- and we are in year two now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nope, in my view it was Year Zero.

      ID.3 was only delivered later in the year (and the Covid interruption in H1 didn't helped with production), and ID.4 had symbolic deliveries. 2021 will be the first true year of both.

      Delete
    2. Yeah, as I said, they failed to quite deliver on the plans... But a failed year doesn't change the fact that it was year one of their plans.

      Delete
    3. Once again, we agree in disagreeing... :-)

      Delete
  5. I don't know about VW becoming #2 EV brand in the US, with only one model... Ford, Chevrolet, Nissan could all very well end up ahead -- even Hyundai, if they become serious with the upcoming new generation selling in that market.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DoggydogworldFebruary 23, 2021

      I've yet to see anyone besides Tesla become serious in the US market. Mostly they are positioning to respond quickly if the gov't gets serious with mandates.

      Delete
    2. Nissan has been serious all these years. Their product just wasn't all that good... That could change with the upcoming Ariya.

      The Ford Mach-E also seems very competitive, and could very well outsell the ID.4 in the US. (Although Ford's volume plans aren't terribly ambitious -- so who knows...)

      Between the existing Bolt (at the new lower price), and the upcoming EUV variant -- serious or not -- they too might outsell ID.4. Especially when considering supposedly upcoming additional models...

      And Hyundai's Ioniq 5 (and presumably other Ioniq models later on) is also looking very promising -- but then again, Hyundai was always selling only in compliance numbers, only in ZEV states: so unless that changes, it won't live up to anywhere close its potential...

      Delete
    3. All in all, VW has its chances to become #2 in the US. I haven't said they would get there, what i wrote was that were aiming for it. ;-)

      Delete
    4. Nissan was serious a decade ago, but the Leaf didn't sell that well so they now just do enough yearend lease buydowns to comply with ZEV/GHG.

      Ford will build 50k+ Mach Es and send 30k+ to Europe.

      Delete
  6. Let's face it, 1799 ID'3 in its homeland is nothing to shout about. Hardly any wonder since VW salesfolks rather shift ICE's (source AutomobilWoche)

    ReplyDelete
  7. What about ID.4? Have there been any registrations, or not yet?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DoggydogworldFebruary 23, 2021

      The article says there were 325 ID4 registrations in Germany in January. There were 2306 in December. The Netherlands is even more lopsided, with 2408 in December and only 8 in January.

      Most of these are apparently self-registrations. I'm not aware of ID4 sales in other countries yet.

      Delete
    2. "[...] while the VW ID.4 had 325."

      Delete
  8. Congratulations to Germany for opening the year/decade with a bang. 39K is a lot for a 1st month which normally sees low sales.

    Benz has 4 diesel plugins, interesting. If the C & E Series are sold in saloon/estate versions, then its like 6 diesel plugin models.
    They are proud of maintaining their history.
    Instead of prompting a person buying EQA (BEV) to petrol car, at least they can prompt them to buy this diesel plugin hybrid.

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Jose Pontes: Germany sold < 37K PEV
    USA sold > 40K PEV which puts it at #2.
    29K for BEV & 11K for PHEV puts BEV share above 70%.
    In this, Tesla should have sold more than 20K which means lot of the PEVs are high mileage vehicles with 400 km + range.

    Please note that the oily admin has gone and new green admin is in and even country has officially joined Paris Accord. Table for USA deserves to be published. I am sure you have the figures and thats why you are able to publishes global sales. At least you can publish top-5 with 1 column for others. Please consider this.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nobody really knows US figures for Tesla -- and without these, any US figures are irrelevant. The only remotely reliable way to estimate those is by taking Tesla's official worldwide quarterly figures, and deducting known sales from most non-US markets... Which doesn't work month-by-month.

      InsideEVs used to make estimates based on various data points, and were very proud of their relative accuracy... Until they had a serious of major misses in 2019, and subsequently gave up on it.

      Delete
  10. Good to see Ford Kuga back in track, hope they got the battery supplies again.

    What is surprising is previous Gen-7 eGolf selling neck to neck with current Gen-8 Golf PHEV. Is it discount / logistics / real demand.
    VW can continue to sell eUp if there is so much demand.

    Will the BEVs gain their traction when ID.4, ID.5 joins in a big way.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are just delivering (belatedly) the last handful of e-Golfs produced, which likely have been ordered half a year ago...

      Delete
  11. Germany and UK continue to pleasantly surprise

    ReplyDelete